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Martin Tripp is the former Tesla employee who is being sued by the company. Tesla accuses Tripp of hacking the automaker’s computer systems and stealing company secrets.
According to the lawsuit, Tripp allegedly tried to sabotage the company because he was angry about not getting promoted.
Court records say that within a few months of being hired, Tripp was accused of being disruptive and combative with colleagues and was assigned a new role in May 2018. The lawsuit alleges that Tripp was angry about the reassignment, prompting him to hack Tesla.
According to The Washington Post, Tripp maintains that he did not tamper with internal systems and is instead a whistleblower who spoke out after seeing “some really scary things” inside the company, including dangerously punctured batteries installed in cars.
via The Washington Post:
Tesla attorneys wrote in their lawsuit that Tripp, a former technician at the company’s Gigafactory battery plant in Nevada, wrote software to aid in an elaborate theft of confidential photos and video of Tesla’s manufacturing systems. The firm’s attorneys said Tripp worked at Tesla from October to last week, when company investigators confronted him with evidence.
Tripp, attorneys wrote, also gave journalists false information about the company, including claims that defective batteries had been used in Tesla’s Model 3 sedans. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Speaking Wednesday night to The Post, Tripp confirmed that he provided information to Business Insider for a story the news website did earlier this month about the company’s raw-material waste.
Tripp claims to have found “hundreds” of Model 3s that had “punctured batteries.” However, Tesla representatives have said they would not ship cars that have safety concerns.
In their lawsuit, Tesla specifically cites the “punctured batteries” claim as an example of the misinformation that they believe Tripp shared.
